Government

RNC Lawyer Under Fire From Republicans For Calling Bullsh*t on Bullsh*t Election Suits

Ready. Aim. Circular firing squad.

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“What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court,” Justin Riemer, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel, wrote in an email to Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington on November 28.

“They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing,” he added presciently, as it turned out.

This candid declaration, published last night by the Washington Post, has come back to haunt Riemer and his boss Ronna Romney McDaniel, current chair of the RNC, who are being accused of sandbagging the former president’s efforts to overturn the election.

This follows on the heels of revelations in Michael Wolff’s upcoming book “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” excerpted on July 10 by Business Insider, of an alcohol-lubricated Rudy Giuliani calling Riemer up to demand his immediate resignation when someone forwarded him the offending email.

The mayor, sitting in the restaurant but in full battle mode (and with a few drinks in him), damn well got Riemer himself on the phone: “Who the fuck do you you think you are? How can you be going against the president? … You need to resign and resign tonight … because you are going to get fired.”

In fact, Riemer did not get fired. And after the RNC hosted that insane press conference where Rudy Giuliani leaked hair dye all over the lectern and Sidney Powell croaked lies about Hugo Chávez stealing the election for Biden, the Committee took some steps to distance itself from the election litigation trainwreck barreling toward them. But McDaniel made no effort to rein in the rampant lying about election fraud which has now become Republican dogma.

Knowing that she’d need Trump’s support to remain head of the RNC, McDaniel carefully made sure not to contradict the lies being pumped out to his credulous supporters, despite her private acknowledgment that the former president’s legal strategy was a doomed dumpster fire.

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After Insider published the Wolff excerpt, the RNC put out a statement calling the whole story a lie.

“As is typical with most things Michael Wolff writes, this story is simply false,” it told Insider. “The RNC legal team fought tooth and nail on election integrity efforts for the entirety of 2020, and that continues today.”

And then the Riemer email leaked to the Post, confirming the account, at least in part.

For his part, Riemer issued his own statement of dubious accuracy and even dubious-er integrity.

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“I led the RNC legal team in over 55 lawsuits on behalf of the President’s reelection, winning a majority of them, including the only successful post-election lawsuit. Any suggestion that I did not support President Trump or do everything in my power to support the RNC’s efforts to reelect President Trump is false,” he told the Post. “I will say publicly now what I then said privately: I take issue with individuals who brought lawsuits that did not serve President Trump well and did not give him the best chance in court.”

First of all, in no universe did the RNC win “a majority” of the pre- and/or post-election lawsuits. That statement is nonsense on its face.

Second, Riemer’s attempt to make a virtue of reconciling his public posture with his private admissions is mighty convenient after the publication of his emails make it impossible to dissemble. But he’s not even making an honest disclosure now — Riemer knew all along that the lawsuits were based on lies, and now he’s making a transparent attempt to pretend that his concern was the quality of representation, not the cases themselves. As if Trump would have won if only he weren’t represented by a pack of demented incompetents and crackpots.

And shredding whatever was left of his reputation probably won’t even work. Already the rightwing knives are out for McDaniel and Riemer, with rabble rousers like Sebastian Gorka calling for their heads.

DID YOU ISSUE THE CODE RED, RONNA????

Meanwhile, Giuliani, who tried and failed to get the RNC to pay his legal bills, continues to run his mouth.

And Jenna Ellis, constitutional traffic lawyer, has loudly stomped out of the GOP.

The only thing which could make this whole thing stupider would be a performative defamation suit seeking eleventy billion dollars in punitive damages for loss of income and hurt feefees. So look for that to be filed next week.

The Republican Party’s top lawyer called election fraud arguments by Trump’s lawyers a ‘joke’ that could mislead millions [WaPo]
‘Who the f— do you think you are?’ Giuliani told RNC chief counsel to resign for questioning Trump election claims, book says [Insider]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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